Day stretching into Night

After a big day yesterday, we needed a more relaxed day today...especially as we had a booking for tonight. Although it isn't part of the Museum Pass, we decided that we would go to the Musée Marmottan Monet as it has a significant collection of works by Claude Monet. Out past Trocadéro, it is best accessed using the M9 Metro or RER C...but as our hotel isn't near either of those, we used buses instead.

Directly outside our hotel was a stop for the Route 38 bus directly into the heart of Paris...so we caught one to Châtelet. The Paris t+ tickets are really great...you can by them 10 at a time to save money and they can either be used on the Metro or the buses. If you use them on a bus, you can change buses as often as you like for 90 minutes from their first use. So at Châtelet we changed to a Route 72 bus which took us alongside la Seine to Trocadéro. At this point we probably should have caught another bus but instead we walked up through the la Muette area to the museum.

Tour Eiffel

Trocadéro

The streets of la Muette

Musée Marmottan Monet started in 1934 when Paul Marmottan left his house and artwork collection to the French Academy of Fine Arts. The collection has been added to over the years with the most significant being the bequest of Michel Monet, Claude Monet's second son. As a result, the museum has a huge and interesting collection of Monet's works and works by other artists that Claude Monet had collected. One of the most evocative paintings on display was Impression, Soleil levant...the painting that was to give the name to the genre.

Impression, Soleil levant...copied from the Internet because you weren't allowed to take photos

 

After we left the museum, we walked back to la Muette where we had lunch and then on to Trocadéro. Here we caught a bus back towards Paris but only went part of the way...getting off at Place de la Concorde so we could go to Musée de l'Orangerie...the home of Claude Monet's Les Nymphéas and the Walter-Guillaume Collection. It was particularly interesting to come here following on from Musée Marmottan Monet as there we had seen some of the works that had been the lead up to the final work of Les Nymphéas. Although it wasn't all that late, after the Musée de l'Orangerie we went back to our hotel for a rest...which would have been more of a rest if we had caught a bus back instead walking all the way.

Part of Les Nymphéas...copied from the Internet because you weren't allowed to take photos

Renoir's last portrait...on loan from a Japanese collection

Painting by Paul Guillaume

Just before dinner time, we were off out again...before leaving Australia we had pre-booked tickets for the top of Tour Eiffel at 8 o'clock. The plan was to head over to the tower and have dinner before going up. After studying the bus map a little more carefully, I discovered that we could catch a Route 82 bus across the road from our hotel and it would take us to Trocadéro without needing to change buses. Once there, we headed back into the la Muette area to find some dinner...and to avoid all the tourists.

On our way to find some dinner

At the appointed time we presented ourselves at the gate for pre-booked tickets and bypassed the crowds still queuing to buy theirs. It still took a while to get to the top as it was a very popular time...but we made it before sunset. It was all rather magical watching the sun go down and Paris slowly light up as it got dark. Eventually we had a fill of the sights and left the tower to go back to our hotel. By then the Route 82 buses had stopped running so we had to fall back to a combination of a Route 72 followed by a Route 38 bus to conclude a very long day.

Up there...that's where we are going

The sun goes down...

...and Paris lights up

Waiting for a bus